


Magic Fingers

by mldrgrl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26434597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: Prompt request: Scully finds out Mulder's secret talent is giving really good massages
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 15
Kudos: 141





	Magic Fingers

It was her shoulder, the first time. She’d been hunched uncomfortably over an autopsy table for too long in too cramped conditions - the best a small town without an official medical examiner could offer - and she had paid the price that night that a handful of Tylenol couldn’t cure.

And Mulder wouldn’t stop talking.

He went on and on, arguing not even with her, but with himself, changing his theory as rapidly as he thumbed through the latest photos. She tried to focus her attention on what he was saying, but the pain in her shoulder was too distracting and she was too weary.

As he droned, she reached up with her right hand and squeezed the top of her left shoulder. He didn’t notice her wince or her whimper, which was just as well. She closed her eyes, pressing as deeply into the aching muscle as she could with her fingers. It was somehow both more painful and less painful at the same time. Her brows drew towards one another in concentrated effort and after a few moments, she realized Mulder had finally, blessedly, stopped talking. She opened her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she answered, lowering her hand and unconsciously rolling her shoulder back. “My shoulder. It’s fine.”

He looked at her with his head tilted, plucking at his bottom lip with his thumb and index fingers. He scooted his chair over closer to hers and slid his pile of photos along with him. He picked up where he left off and he reached up, one-handedly massaging her shoulder as he pointed to different things in the photos he wanted her to see.

She probably should have told him to stop, but she was afraid if she were to open her mouth it would be to weep with relief. His thumb pushed into the back of her shoulder in the exact spot she needed him to and she had to bite her lip to stop from moaning.

With slightly trembling hands, she picked up one of the photos to examine the shape of some burn marks that he was insisting held a pattern that she couldn’t see. Without missing a beat, Mulder stood and shifted his right hand to her right shoulder and his left to her left. He leaned over her chair just a little, speaking down above her head as he continued on with a very firm and thorough massage of her shoulders. 

“I, uh…” She blew out a breath and fought against dropping her head forward. “It looks...it looks…Mulder, even if I saw what you did, what does it prove?”

“You’re right.” He abruptly stopped his massage and his hands stilled on her shoulders. He gave her one last squeeze and then gathered the photos.

“Leave them,” she said. “I’ll look them over again in the morning, once I’ve gotten some sleep.”

He nodded and then looked at his watch and cringed. “Sorry, Scully, it’s…”

“It’s okay.” She got up to walk him to the door of her motel room. “Thank you for, um…” She gestured to her shoulder. “It feels a lot better.”

“Anytime.” He grinned and then wiggled his fingers at her. “They don’t call me Magic Fingers Mulder for nothing.”

“Who’s they?”

He shrugged. “People could.”

“Mmhm.”

“Night, Scully.”

“Good night, Mulder.”

****

The second time it was a headache that had been troubling her for the better part of an evening. They were very inconveniently on a stakeout, trapped within the confines of the front seats of their rental car. The headlights of passing cars would occasionally whiz by, the bright light making her flinch and try to surreptitiously sink below the dashboard. It was only when Mulder would press the binoculars to his face that she could discreetly rub her temples or pinch the bridge of her nose for some relief. She’d washed down a few aspirin with tepid coffee over an hour ago and the dull ache remained. She’d also made sure the glove compartment was well-stocked with napkins for any sudden nosebleeds.

“Give me your hand,” Mulder suddenly said.

“My hand?” Without thinking about it, she started to put her hand out to him, but then pulled it back. “Why?”

“I’m bored, thought I’d read your palm.” He put the binoculars down in his lap and turned his head to her and inclined his chin up at her. “I can help with that.”

“Help with what?”

“Your headache. Let me see your hand.”

“I don’t…” She stopped her denial short when she saw his brows go up. Reluctantly, she moved her arm up and held her hand out to him. He folded his arm over hers and held it steady tucked up against his side.

“This is the Hegu,” he said, pressing his thumb into the divot between the base of her thumb and index finger. In the same spot, but on her palm, he pressed with his index finger so that it was like he had her hand in a vice.

Almost immediately, she felt a lightness in her head. The pain hadn’t gone away entirely, but rather she was numb to it. She could still feel the thrum of the headache without actually feeling the ache.

“Tell me if I press too hard,” he said.

“It’s fine,” she murmured. 

“Guessing they never covered acupressure in med school?”

“No, they didn’t.”

He moved his thumb in a slow circle, massaging her hand while keeping an eye on the suspect’s windows. Within minutes, she could no longer feel the pain in her head and finally she flexed her fingers and tugged on his grip every so slightly to indicate he could let go.

“Want me to do the other side?” he asked.

She wiped a hand across her brow. “No, I think...it’s gone, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He picked up the binoculars from his lap and put them to his face again. “Say something earlier next time. You don’t have to suffer.”

“Okay,” she replied, with no intention of keeping that promise.

*****

She’d been awake since 4:30 am EST and it was currently 8:42 am PST. That was over 31 hours by her estimation without sleep, on her feet, in the same boots she’d stepped into before heading to Dulles.

She hobbled into her motel room, barely able to muster the energy to remove her leather jacket. She tried to drape it over the chair by the window, but it slipped off the back and she left it on the floor. All she wanted to do was sleep.

Not bothering to turn the bed down, she crawled across the mattress and collapsed onto her back, sprawling diagonally and staring up at the popcorn ceiling. Mulder pushed through the connecting door only moments later, already in fresh jeans and bare-chested.

“I booked the next flight out,” he said. “We leave in twenty minutes.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered.

He chuckled and sat down by her feet. “Tomorrow morning,” he said, unzipping her right boot. She groaned as he pulled it off her foot. He took her left boot off as well and then pulled his legs up to sit cross-legged with her feet in his lap.

“Oh my god,” she said, when he slid his thumbs up her insteps. Her eyes slipped shut and she sighed.

“That good?”

“Don’t stop.”

“Careful, it’s talk like that that’ll lead to breaking the rules.”

“I don’t care. Don’t stop.”

He worked both feet at the same time for a few minutes and then concentrated on the left with both hands, massaging from heel to toe. She only let a few moans slip out. He moved on to the right foot and she winced when he squeezed the knuckle of her pinkie toe. She was fairly certain she’d developed a blister.

“Hurt?” he asked.

“Blister, I think,” she answered.

“Why do you wear them?”

“Why?”

“Don’t get me wrong, Scully, the heels, the boots, they’re sexy as hell-”

“Careful,” she interrupted. “It’s talk like that that’ll lead to breaking the rules.”

“But, your poor little feet.” He stopped massaging to gently caress the top of her foot.

“They’ll survive.” She wiggled her toes at him to hint that he wasn’t finished.

“I could’ve been doing this for you years ago.”

“It matters more that you’re doing it for me now.”

He stopped and her feet slipped from his lap as he uncrossed his legs. He hovered over her on his hands and knees and then bent down and kissed the corner of her mouth. She opened one eye and then reached up and pinched his chin before he could actually kiss her lips.

“It’s a stupid rule,” he mumbled, turning his head and pursing his lips to kiss her thumb instead.

“I didn’t tell you to stop.”

“No, actually, I think I recall you telling me not to stop.” He crawled back, returned to his cross-legged position, and took her feet back into his lap.

She yawned. “Just let me get a few hours in,” she murmured. “You should get some sleep as well.”

“You sleep. I think I’ll take the rental and head to Lady Footlocker and get you some sneakers.”

*****

How things have changed, she thought, as she knocked on his door. When she’d started feeling faint, feeling nauseated, instead of hiding away she went straight to Mulder. This thing between them was new, still in development, playful and flirtatious and fun. She’d never had to seek comfort or reassurance from him before, but she needed it now.

He brought her in, helped her into his bed and out of her shoes, wrapped his arms around her and whispered lovely things into her ear. The chill she felt left her and she was able to stop trembling. The nausea abated, but she still felt strange and restless.

“What can I do?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I feel achy and tired.”

“The flu?”

“It doesn’t feel like the flu. It doesn’t feel like anything I’ve experienced before.”

He slipped out of the bed and turned off all the lights except for the dim vanity light in the bathroom. He came back with one of the sample-sized bottles of motel lotion and collected all the photos that had scattered across the bed when he laid her down.

“Let’s get you out of these clothes,” he said.

“Agent Mulder,” she murmured. “Are you coming on to me?”

“Only for the last seven years. You just finally noticed a few months ago. Can you sit up?”

She pushed herself up and tiredly brushed the hair out of her face. He opened the buttons on her blouse and she twisted her shoulders this way and that to free her arms. She unhooked her bra on her own and he rolled the comforter back and shoved the pillows aside as she pushed her slacks off her hips.

She laid down on her stomach with her right cheek pressed to the bed. Mulder straddled the backs of her thighs and kept most of his weight on his knees. The lotion he squeezed onto his palms smelled like lemons. Not unpleasant, but not ideal either. The next time he was inspired to give her a massage, she’d try to have something nicer on hand.

He started at the middle of her back and smoothed his slick hands up to her shoulders. She pushed out a small puff of air as she tried to settle and relax. He was quiet as he worked her shoulders and neck. No jokes, no witty remarks. She savored the silence and for once, allowed herself to just enjoy being taken care of.

“You really are good at this,” she murmured.

“I told you once before, they don’t call me Magic Fingers Mulder for nothing.”

“Yet you never told me who ‘they’ were.”

“Anyone who’s been lucky enough to have the magic fingers upon them.”

She smiled with the right side of her mouth and snorted lightly. He braced his hands on the small of her back and then scooted down closer to the backs of her knees. For her, it was at that point when the massage took a turn from gentle and comforting to unbearably erotic. And it wasn’t anything that he purposefully did, it was simply that her brain suddenly seemed to register the fact that her skin and his hands had gotten intimately familiar as of late and she started to anticipate what should come next.

It was hard work to be still when every drag of his fingers down her back and the slow slide of his palms up to the backs of her shoulders made her feel like writhing. Her pelvis ached and her stomach dropped and flipped and heat flooded her veins and made her skin prickle. She could feel sweat forming at her temples and low back from the effort it took not to push her hips up into his hands. Tears gathered behind her closed eyes and clung to her lashes before rolling slowly across her cheek and nose, dripping silently to the bed.

“Scully?” Mulder paused and placed his hand lightly at the back of her neck, thumbing her hair out of the way.

“I love you,” she breathed. “I…”

It took exactly two seconds for Mulder to respond. “I love you too,” he said. He bent down, touched his lips to the back of her shoulder and then continued with the massage. His touch was a bit firmer though, more confident. Saying those words out loud was like its own kind of release. She felt satiated and calm.

At some point, she felt Mulder move off of her and felt the blankets being draped over her. Half-asleep, she let her hand flop blindly across the bed, looking for Mulder.

“I’m here,” he whispered, sliding his hand into hers as he lifted the covers and slid in beside her. He’d stripped to his boxers. Warm flesh against warm flesh. She put her arm over his chest and slid one leg between his. “My little rulebreaker,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head.

*****

She was due in less than two weeks and she felt every bit as pregnant as she looked. She hadn’t seen her feet in a month and she couldn’t last more than twenty minutes without needing a bathroom. She loved it though. She loved feeling the baby kick; finding a little hand or foot or elbow pressed against her abdomen; or the time the baby had the hiccups. It was what she had hoped and prayed for.

What she didn’t love, was the constant ache that had developed in her hips and lower back. She had yet to find a position she could be in, standing, sitting, or laying, that offered any relief. She had asked about it at her last Lamaze class and the answers had been simple: take a warm bath or apply warm compresses, elevate the hips, try massage. She’d tried the bath, tried the compresses, and elevated her hips. None of it worked.

She was having a particularly rough day when Mulder knocked on her door. Things had been so strange between them since his return. She tried to understand his trauma, tried not to push, but she didn’t expect him to shut her out so completely. He had only recently started to express a hint of interest in the baby, but had yet to ask her the questions she knew he must have. He’d attended her last Lamaze class with her a few evenings prior and she had waited through the silence of the car ride home, willing him to say something, but he hadn’t.

“Pizza?” he asked, holding out his offering to her when she answered the door. 

“Come in.” She pushed the door open and walked away to let him see himself in. Waddled, is more like it. She dug her fists into the small of her back and headed slowly to the couch. He was lucky she’d already been up, on her way from the bathroom to the kitchen when he knocked, otherwise he’d still be waiting.

Mulder followed closely behind and set the pizza box down on the coffee table. He shed his jacket and then pushed the sleeves of his sweater up as he headed to the kitchen for plates and napkins. He seemed relaxed, almost jovial. He brought the plates and napkins and then disappeared again, returning this time with two glasses of water. She eyed him a little suspiciously as he doled out the pizza.

“What, um...brought this on?” she asked, watching him devour nearly half a slice of pizza in a single bite as she blew the heat off her own slice.

“Thought you might need some sustenance,” he replied around his mouthful.

She stretched her back and sighed. “What I could really use are those magic fingers of yours,” she answered.

Mulder wiped his mouth with a napkin and glanced at her belly and everywhere else but her face. When he finally looked her in the eye he cleared his throat and then looked away, setting his pizza plate onto the coffee table.

“I can do that,” he said. “I’ve actually been...reading about it. There was, uh...a pamphlet at the Lamaze place. I brought it home.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “It’s fine,” she said. “I was joking.” She was actually only half-kidding. She would kill her beloved pizza delivery man for a massage from Mulder.

“You don’t want me to.” The statement was very matter-of-fact and a little forlorn. He turned away and stared at the coffee table.

“I just don’t want you to feel...obligated.”

“When have I ever felt obligated?” He turned his head towards her and glanced down at her belly again. He tapped his fingers together nervously.

“I suppose...never.”

“But, if you don’t want me to, I’ll...it’s fine.”

“I do.” She put the pizza back onto the plate without taking a bite. “I want you to.”

“Okay.” He stood and then sat back down again and leaned forward off the edge of the cushion. “Uh, it says the best way to do it is for you to lay on your side. Should we…?”

“You’ll have to help me up.”

He took her hands and helped pull her from the couch. She puffed her cheeks and expelled a puff of air with the exertion and then twisted the knuckles of her index fingers into her hips after letting go of him. He put the pizza away in the kitchen while she went to the bedroom to lay down. She took her robe off but left her cotton t-shirt and flannel pants on. 

Mulder stood in the doorway watching her arrange the pillows - one under her head, one between her knees, one clutched to her chest like a teddy bear. He hovered there until she was in place and then he stepped out of his shoes on his way over to the bed.

“The guides said not a lot of pressure,” he said, one hand hovering over her shoulder. “Long strokes and...if anything hurts or doesn’t feel right, you tell me.”

“I will,” she said.

He finally knelt behind her, but it was still a few more moments before he touched her. She sighed immediately, even the soft pressure of his thumbs above her tailbone was immensely gratifying. She groaned and his hands flew up.

“Too much?” he asked. “Hurts?”

“No, it’s good,” she assured him. “Feels really good.”

“Okay.”

For the first time she could remember, his touch was tentative. He’d never hesitated over her before and she hoped it was only because the health scare she’d had with the baby made him nervous, and not because  _ she _ made him nervous. He gradually became less timid and her muscles were singing in appreciation.

“I want to confess something,” he said, suddenly, but didn’t stop massaging her.

“Okay.”

“I saw your chart when you were in the hospital. You’re...38 weeks now.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not the best at math, but...when you felt sick, in Oregon, does that mean…?”

She swallowed hard and shifted her eyes to glance back at him. “I found out the night you went missing.”

“Oh.”

There was an extended silence. She counted the slide of Mulder’s hands up and down her back. Fourteen passes and he said nothing more.

“Is there anything else you’d like to know?” she asked.

“I didn’t really know what was happening when I woke up. I thought...I thought years had passed, at first. I thought you had tried the IVF again or had moved on...with someone else.”

“You could’ve asked.”

“You could’ve just told me.”

“I didn’t want to push.”

“I was afraid of what the answer might be.”

She sighed and then he stopped and rested his hand on her hip. She took it, laced their fingers together and brought his arm up and across her waist to rest on top of her stomach. He shifted and laid down behind her.

“I saw something else,” he said.

“What?”

“You’re having a boy.”

“We’re having a boy,” she confirmed.

He pressed his face into the back of her head and breathed deeply. His chest swelled against her back and she pulled him closer until he fit snugly against her.

“When do you think we…?” he asked.

“After you went chasing crop circles in England,” she said. “I think.”

“I remember.” He pulls his fingers free from hers only to rest his whole hand fully on her swollen belly. “Scully, I’m not much of a catch right now - unemployed, recently raised from the dead, terrible cook, and I’ve been known to be a bit of a short-sighted, selfish SOB at times, but all I know is that one day we were in Oregon and we loved each other and suddenly it’s six months later and everything is different, but I still love you and...and I’m pretty good at keeping my fish happy and I tell great jokes and I can promise to give you really good massages every day for the rest of...for as long as you’ll have me. If you’ll have me.”

“Mulder,” she whispered, hugging his arm to her chest and pulling his hand up to kiss his knuckles.

“You don’t have to answer right now or anything.”

“Shut up, Mulder.”

“Okay, but-”

She cut him off by turning her head and pulling him into a kiss. It lasted only a few seconds, but it was enough to end any doubts for either of them. She snuggled back down into his arms and he tightened his hold on her.

“Magic Fingers Mulder strikes again,” he whispered.

She rolled her closed eyes, but smiled.

The End


End file.
